SQL Server 100% CPU Utilization - One database shows high CPU usage than others

Question

We have an SQL server with about 40 different (about 1-5GB each) databases. The server is an 8 core 2.3G CPU with 32Gigs of RAM. 27Gig is pinned to SQL Server. The CPU utliziation is mostly close to 100% always and memory consumption is about 95%. The problem here is the CPU which is constantly close to 100% and trying to understand the reason.

I have run an initial check to see which database contributes to high CPU by using - this script but I could not substantiate in detail on whats really consuming CPU. The top query (from all DBs) only takes about 4 seconds to complete. IO is also not a bottleneck.

Would Memory be the culprit here? I have checked the memory split and the OBJECT CACHE occupies about 80% of memory allocated (27G) to SQL Server. I hope that is normal provided there are lot of SPs involved. Running profiler, I do see lot of recompiles, but mostly are due to "temp table changed", "deferred compile" etc and am not clear if these recompiles are a result of plans getting thrown out of cache due to memory pressure

Appreciate any thoughts.

Answer 1

You can see some reports in SSMS:

Right-click the instance name / reports / standard / top sessions

You can see top CPU consuming sessions. This may shed some light on what SQL processes are using resources. There are a few other CPU related reports if you look around. I was going to point to some more DMVs but if you've looked into that already I'll skip it.

You can use sp_BlitzCache to find the top CPU consuming queries. You can also sort by IO and other things as well. This is using DMV info which accumulates between restarts.

This article looks promising.

Some stackoverflow goodness from Mr. Ozar.

edit: A little more advice... A query running for 'only' 5 seconds can be a problem. It could be using all your cores and really running 8 cores times 5 seconds - 40 seconds of 'virtual' time. I like to use some DMVs to see how many executions have happened for that code to see what that 5 seconds adds up to.

Answer 2

According to this article on sqlserverstudymaterial;

Remember that "%Privileged time" is not based on 100%.It is based on number of processors.If you see 200 for sqlserver.exe and the system has 8 CPU then CPU consumed by sqlserver.exe is 200 out of 800 (only 25%).

If "% Privileged Time" value is more than 30% then it's generally caused by faulty drivers or anti-virus software. In such situations make sure the BIOS and filter drives are up to date and then try disabling the anti-virus software temporarily to see the change.

If "% User Time" is high then there is something consuming of SQL Server. There are several known patterns which can be caused high CPU for processes running in SQL Server including